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The past ten days have seen
dramatic news from our nation's courts, the kind of news that could change
everything. On June 23, an atypical majority of the Supreme Court
led by Justice Antonin Scalia held that juries, not judges, must decide
any fact of a case if it is to be used to increase the length of a convicted
defendant's sentence, not merely enough facts to determine guilt on some
of them.

Though the ruling was directed
at the sentencing guideline system in use in Washington State, this week
the highly conservative US District Court Judge Paul Cassell of Utah --
who clerked for then-Appeals Court Judge Scalia after graduating law school,
in 1984 when the federal sentencing guidelines were being written -- relied
on it to find the federal guidelines unconstitutional themselves.
Cassell wrote that he intends to ignore the guidelines "until the constitutionality...
has been definitely resolved by the Supreme Court."

And there was more... In
Maine, US District Court Judge Brock Hornby reduced a defendant's sentence
from 20 years down to 6½ years, calling the Scalia ruling's applicability
to the federal guidelines "inevitable." And in Pennsylvania, an Assistant
US Attorney reacted to the decision by asking the courts to put a hold
on sentencing so his office could seek guidance from Attorney General John
Ashcroft.

Interestingly, the sentencing
ferment didn't wait for the Supreme Court ruling. A few days earlier,
Senior District Judge William Young of Massachusetts had also found the
federal guideline system unconstitutional, condemning it as "heavily rigged
against the citizen" and castigating the Department of Justice for "callous indifference
to innocent human life." Young noted the bizarre fact that "federal
criminal sentences today may be based on conduct of which a defendant has
been formally acquitted" -- an unfortunate procedure formulated by the
original sentencing commission that crafted the guidelines, a group which
included now-Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Young is no wild-eyed radical,
but a well respected jurist; he gained popular fame for patriotic
words spoken to would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid on sentencing him last
December, published in in news outlets around the country. Certainly
Cassell and Scalia are not the traditional darlings of criminal justice
reformers, our sorts of reforms at least. Two years ago Scalia drew
criticism for insulting a high school student and plaintiff who had challenged
a high school drug testing policy -- "the druggie school," Scalia dubbed
a hypothetical institution of learning to which the parents of Tecumseh, OK, student Lindsay
Earls would presumably prefer to send her. Neither Cassell's ruling
nor Scalia's was made in the context of a drug case.

But if Scalia falls short
on some of the issues we care about, he has held fast to one very important
principle this time -- the right to a trial by jury, in the full spirit
of what that should mean. And he has done so in the face
of credible warnings from fellow conservative Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
of the radical change, and considerable turmoil, that his finding is likely
to presage.

Perhaps other justices will
hold true to another principle of demonstrated importance to them, the
notion that the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause does not authorize
the federal government to do everything they might desire. Also in
non-drug cases, a majority faction of the Supreme Court has rolled back
federal power on this basis. Late last year the 9th Circuit applied
that logic to throw out federal statute law criminalizing non-commercial,
local medical use and distribution of marijuana in the historic Raich v. Ashcroft case. The Supreme Court
has agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal of that ruling.
If five or more justices stay consistent to their previous views on the
limits of federal power, the results will have serious political ramifications
and potentially undermine drug prohibition at the federal level itself.

Only time will tell how the
Supreme Court will decide on Raich v. Ashcroft, and discerning how much further
a positive ruling could serve to undo drug laws would take even more time.
And the ramifications of last week's ruling, while clearly major, are also
uncertain in their extent. For example, the Court could decide in
a future case that sentencing guidelines or mandatory minimum sentences,
even harsh ones, can be constitutional if applied in a procedure that relies
on juries to establish the facts as used during sentencing hearings.
But that doesn't seem to be what experts are predicting from this, at least
not all of them.

And even if that happens,
it will also take time. In the meanwhile, judges around the country, already
incensed by the undermining of their sentencing discretion and the sheer
draconian length of many drug sentences, now have rulings from the highest
levels of the bench to justify them not merely in departing from harsh
guideline sentences, but even in ignoring them entirely. By the time a different
ruling could be made to start to turn things back, literally tens if not
hundreds of thousands of defendants could have challenged their sentences,
and in many cases gained relief. As expensive and tumultuous as the
ruling may be for the courts now, changing things back may turn out to
be equally expensive and tumultuous by that time, and the actions of numerous
judges responding to those petitions, and ruling in new cases, will have
permanently altered the terms of the debate.

Other forces are also serving
to alter the debate. Though last week's ruling saw the Court split
5-4, of the four justices taking the dissenting view, at least two of them
have spoken out against mandatory minimum sentencing for reasons other than constitutionality, Chief Justice William
Rehnquist and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy has become a veritable
champion for ending mandatory minimums, most recently lending his name
to an American Bar Association committee which last week called for that.
Whether through judicial pronouncement or legislative reform, an overwhelming
majority of the Court wants change.

Bad timing on the part of
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who
just offered a bill to seriously increase mandatory minimum sentencing
2½ weeks ago. He must feel on the backside of history this
time. Given the serious constitutional questions the Supreme Court
and other judges have raised since then about this kind of lawmaking, the
responsible thing for him to do would be to withdraw his bill. Of
course, if he were responsible about these things then he would have respected
the views of judges and analysts more than he does, and never introduced
it in the first place. But we'll let that go, if he'll let the bill
go.

The conventional wisdom in
drug policy reform has been that we won't win this in the courts, right
as we may be, at least not at the federal level. The courts are to
some degree political animals and are subject to the currents of popular
opinion. I have largely ascribed to this in the past, even though
I think the legal efforts are worthwhile and important, but now I'm rethinking
that view. Though it's true that most judges, including most judges
on the Supreme Court, will probably not stand up for all the necessary
first principles at the level needed to undo the drug laws, maybe that much
isn't necessary. Maybe it's enough for one or two key justices to
stand up for one principle, and another one or two to stand up for a different
one, for the whole thing to ultimately unravel. It may be that the
drug war is so flawed in legal and ethical terms that it is inevitable
for it to collapse under its own weight regardless.

Perhaps in the long run the
Constitution will actually work -- even for drugs!

In an opinion handed down
June 23, the US Supreme Court has thrown the federal sentencing system
into a shambles. In deciding Blakely v. Washington, the court threw
out a state sentencing structure that allowed judges to increase sentences
based on facts that were never proven before a jury, but the ruling also
appears to draw a direct bead on similar schemes in at least nine other
states and, most significantly, the federal sentencing guidelines system
in place since 1987. The reverberations have already begun this week,
as federal judges laid aside the guidelines to grant lower sentences.
Most significantly, a federal judge in Utah Tuesday used the Blakely decision
to declare the federal guidelines unconstitutional.

US Supreme Court

The ruling came in the case
of Ralph Blakely, who was convicted of second-degree kidnapping, which
carries a maximum sentence of 10 years but a standard guideline range of
no more than 53 months. The Washington sentencing guidelines allowed
the judge to impose a harsher sentence if he found "substantial and compelling
reasons justifying an exceptional sentence." The judge did just that,
finding at sentencing that Blakely's coduct was "deliberate cruelty" and
sentencing him to 90 months. The judge's finding was not based on
any facts presented in the indictment or proven before a jury. And
judges can't do that, the Supreme Court said.

In so doing, the court applied
a rule in had first enunciated four years ago in Apprendi v. New Jersey,
when it struck down a harsher prison sentence for a defendant because a
judge -- not a jury -- found that Apprendi had committed a hate crime (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/147/fedstremble.shtml).
Then, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, wrote: "Other than
the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for
a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a
jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt."

In Blakely, Scalia noted
that, "When a judge inflicts a punishment that the jury's verdict alone
does not allow... the judge exceeds his proper authority." The Constitution
gives defendants a right to trial by a jury, and "every defendant has the
right to insist that the prosecutor prove to a jury all facts legally essential
to the punishment," wrote Scalia for the 5-4 majority. In both Apprendi
and Blakely, Scalia, and fellow justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter,
Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg formed the majority, while Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G.
Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented.

"The implications of this
are absolutely enormous," said Mark Allenbaugh, a nationally known authority
on federal and state sentencing law and current chair of the Federal Sentencing
Guidelines Task Force for the DC chapter of the Federal Bar Association.

"This is an opportunity to
redo what was started about 20 years ago but went off in the wrong direction.
Sentencing reform and the guidelines never had a chance because of the
mandatory minimums," he told DRCNet. "They mucked up the system and
made the guidelines too complex and unwieldy. This system is a mess,
and this is a good opportunity for the Congress to throw out the old system
and get a new system in place, one that upholds the goal of fairness, but
without the draconian sentencing laws."

"On the Richter scale, this
is as high as it gets," concurred Marc Mauer, executive director of the
Sentencing Project (http://www.sentencingproject.org),
a Washington, DC-based organization seeking to reduce the nation's reliance
on incarceration. "Coming within a few days of the American Bar Association's
Kennedy Commission report (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/343/aba.shtml),
this is a very strong statement for sentencing reform. The mix of
high-level attention from both the court and the legal community makes
this an exciting time like we haven't seen for a long time."

"Beyond a doubt, today's
decision in Blakely spells the end of sentencing guidelines -- as we know
them," said Barry Scheck, president-elect of the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers. "The decision does not represent a step
backward from the goal of sentencing reform, but a great leap forward,
because it stands for the proposition that no defendant in a US court will
be punished for an unproven crime."

"On first impression, it
was truly earth shattering," said Roger Goodman of the King County Bar
Association in Seattle. "You never expect the Berlin Wall to fall.
But as I think about it, when applied to drug sentencing in the states,
it is an intermediate, remedial step, it softens the edges a little.
In many states, including Washington, the legislatures understand the need
for treatment and give the judge discretion on drug sentencing. But
this could have a huge fiscal impact. Here in Washington, there are
probably 2,500 to 3,000 cases that will need resentencing."

The impact at the federal
level will be much more significant, said Goodman. "Drug sentences
are very structured at the federal level now," he said. "There is
a great potential for reform of drug sentences at the federal level, and
that would be most welcome."

The reaction to Blakely has
been swift in coming, and is only beginning. Federal prosecutors
in Pennsylvania requested a hold on sentencing of convicted defendants
the day after the ruling appeared.

"We just felt that the language
of the opinion had potentially broad implications," said Assistant US Attorney
Timothy R. Rice, in a statement announcing that his office was asking that
sentencing could be postponed until prosecutors got guidance from Attorney
General John Ashcroft about how to proceed.

Maine US District Court Judge
Brock Hornby cut one defendant's sentence from 20 to 6 ½ years and
delayed another's sentencing, citing the Supreme Court decision in Blakely.
Hornby acknowledged that Blakely had not immediately overturned the federal
guidelines, but said it was inevitable. "I conclude that perhaps
the Supreme Court can find a way to explain away Blakely in its language
and its reasoning, but as a trial judge and a sentencing judge, I cannot.
I must take it as written," he said in an unusual press statement.
"I will leave it to higher courts to tell me it does not mean exactly what
it says."

But the biggest shock this
week was the ruling by conservative Utah US District Court Judge Paul Cassell,
who, based on Blakely, ruled the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional.
(In Boston last week, US 1st District Court Judge William Young issued
a similar ruling based on Apprendi, but without the benefit of Blakely,
which was handed down three days later. See related story this issue.)

"I take no pleasure in striking
down the guidelines today... but the court's fundamental obligation is
to uphold the Constitution," Cassell wrote as he departed from the guidelines
in a child pornography case sentence hearing. His ruling could have
"potentially cataclysmic implications," Cassell noted, but he added that
he intends to ignore the guidelines "until the constitutionality... has
been definitely resolved by the Supreme Court."

In an interview with the
Deseret News Tuesday, Cassell reiterated that the Supreme Court had not
ruled on the federal guidelines, but argued that such a holding was implicit
in the court's decision and certain to be addressed by the court soon.
"Doesn't the rationale also lead to the conclusion that the federal sentencing
guidelines are unconstitutional?" Cassell asked. "Isn't it time for
the other shoe to drop?"

In her stinging dissent,
Justice O'Connor warned direly that the ruling was a dagger aimed directly
at the federal guidelines and would be "a disaster." More than 272,000
federal defendants had been sentenced since Apprendi alone, she noted,
adding that "chaos" would result as those defendants pursued appeals.
"What I have feared most has now come to pass," O'Connor lamented.
"Over 20 years of sentencing reform are all but lost, and tens of thousands
of criminal judgments are in jeopardy."

"Justice O'Connor indicated
that she believes that everybody sentenced at the federal level since Apprendi
in 2000 will be entitled to appeal for resentencing," said sentencing expert
Allenbaugh. "I think she's right. I am anticipating a flood
of habeas motions in district courts all over the place. I think
there will be more trials and fewer plea bargains; currently in the federal
system, we're at about 96% plea bargains, and that could drop to 70%.
And you may end up seeing fewer federal prosecutions. The feds will
be more selective, knowing that they have less leverage at the bargaining
stage. If you don't see plea bargain rates go down, you will see
prosecution rates go down. Given our overtaxed system, there is no
way it can cope unless something gives."

But wait, there's more.
Blakely should also apply to mandatory minimums, said Allenbaugh.
"I don't see how it can not apply," he said. "Everybody who went
to trial and was found guilty and sentenced with the jury making a finding
of fact or who made a plea agreement and was sentenced to a mandatory minimum
-- I think they're entitled to walk."

"It must have been chaos
in the courts of the land this week," said Nora Callahan, executive director
of the November Coalition (http://www.november.org),
a drug reform group focused on freeing the prisoners of the drug war.
"They must be asking what do we do know? Prosecutors can't tell the
judges what the sentences are going to be anymore. All of the analysis
has been about the judges, but what happened in Blakely is that prosecutors
lost the ability to tell judges how it will go down.

"I was against sentencing
guidelines from the beginning, because they were a fraud," said Callahan.
"They aren't guidelines, they are a rigid mandate. But all that changed
on Friday. But what about those prisoners sentenced before Apprendi?"
she asked. "If it is not going to be retroactive, what do we do?
Simultaneous protests? Postcard campaigns? If there is no movement
toward retroactivity by September, there will be big stuff happening on
the outside, and maybe on the inside. Remember what happened when
Congress refused to fix the crack penalties. The system blew up.
It is time to demand amnesty. At Abu Ghraib when there was scandal,
they just let half of them out. If they can do it in Iraq, why not
here? Let them out, lift the bans that keep them from getting assistance,
good hearted church folk could each take one. Then let's move on
to selective enforcement and ending drug prohibition."

In the meantime, legislatures
in at least nine states have some work to do re-jiggering their sentencing
schemes. And Congress, too, would be well advised to begin preparing
to rewrite the federal sentencing laws.

All but lost amid the furor
and speculation in the wake of the US Supreme Court's Blakely decision
(see story this issue) last Thursday was a ruling three days earlier by
a US Circuit Court judge that federal sentencing guidelines are unconstitutional
because they unfairly limit judges' discretion. The guidelines give
too much power to prosecutors, pervert the federal justice system by turning
it into a plea bargain factory, and result in harsh and unfair sentences,
1st US Circuit Court Senior Judge William Young wrote in a scathing 174-page
opinion in a series of drug cases.

Under the guideline system,
federal judges are virtually relegated to the role of checking boxes in
a sentencing grid mandated by Congress and implemented by the US Sentencing
Commission. The guidelines, which were originally seen as reforms
removing disparities in sentencing, mandate sentences based on factors
such as seriousness of the crime, criminal background, acceptance of responsibility,
and "cooperation with authorities," a polite term for snitching on others
to gain a shorter sentence for oneself. As DRCNet has reported (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/330/kennedy.shtml
most recently), the federal judiciary has grown increasingly vocal in its
criticism of the system.

Young's decision is not binding
and is likely to be appealed, but until and if it is overturned, it can
be cited by other federal judges. Coming on the heels of the American
Bar Association's report calling for an end to mandatory minimum sentences
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/343/aba.shtml),
and the US Supreme Court's Blakely decision, which threatens to unravel
the federal sentencing guidelines, Judge Young's ruling is one more augur
that that the end is drawing near for a system that has engorged federal
prisons for nearly two decades.

"Judge Young's decision comes
in the context of a week of ferment for sentencing in general," said Marc
Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project (http://www.sentencingproject.org),
a group devoted to finding alternatives to imprisonment. "The federal
guidelines have been a challenge for years, and Judge Young's opinion shows
this is up for grabs," Mauer told DRCNet. "He is a well-respected
judge, and he is saying he believes the entire system does not make sense
and is unconstitutional. People are very much paying attention to
this because Judge Young is raising issues that a lot of people have been
thinking about."

In his decision, Young amalgamated
five drug cases, excoriating the Justice Department for demanding multi-decade
sentences for small-timers, offering a sweet deal to a confessed multiple
killer and gang leader who offered up the others, and sentencing a crack-addicted
teenage mother to a lengthy prison term followed by deportation even though
she testified against a major drug dealer. The cases involved punishing
defendants who wanted trials, illegal bargaining by prosecutors, bargains
with cold-blooded killers, and "such callous indifference to innocent human
life that it would gag any fair-minded observer," Young wrote.

Judge Young gave eloquent
expression to the sense of judicial unease over sentencing issues in a
sweeping critique portraying federal practices as fundamentally corrupt.
"The Justice Department is so addicted to plea bargaining to leverage its
law enforcement resources to an overwhelming conviction rate," wrote Young,
"that the focus of the entire criminal justice system has shifted away
from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence
bargaining that it is heavily rigged against the citizen... Today the Department's
efforts at law enforcement depend on plea bargaining as never before."

As Young pointed out in his
opinion, 97% of federal criminal cases are resolved by plea bargains.
Defendants who insist on their right to a jury trial end up with sentences
six times as long as those who play the plea bargain game, Young wrote,
because US Attorneys manipulate charges and ignore or emphasize facts (such
as possession of a gun or a certain quantity of drugs) in order to force
pleas and punish people who insist on their innocence.

Defendants are then sentenced
under the guidelines, but, Young argued, with individual judges no more
than "weak reeds" before the institutional weight of the Justice Department,
those guidelines and their sentencing factors offer little protection to
defendants or leeway for judges. With "real offense" sentencing,
where judges consider facts unproven at trial during sentencing, the situation
becomes absolutely bizarre, Young wrote. "The result has been the
routine sentencing of offenders on the basis of crimes with which they
have never been charged, the commission of which they deny, without any
evidence having ever been proffered against them," read his opinion.
"Even more bizarre, federal criminal sentences today may be based on conduct
of which a defendant has been formally acquitted."

As a consequence of unbridled
prosecutorial power, Young held, defendants were being unconstitutionally
deprived of their right to due process. In reaching that conclusion
he relied on the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/147/fedstremble.shtml),
where the court held that judges may not enhance sentences beyond the statutory
maximum unless those enhancing "facts" are proven by a jury. Apprendi
was also the controlling case in the Supreme Court's decision in Blakely
last week, a case that Young noted was pondering "a similar question."

"Judge Young's opinion is
a very careful analysis of the way the federal criminal justice system
has come to work," said Bjorn Lang, an assistant federal public defender
in Concord, New Hampshire, which is in Young's judicial district.
"This opinion reflects a lot of work and a lot of thought by a very experienced
judge. I hope that somebody with power, such as Congress, reads it
and gives it the serious thought it deserves," Lang told DRCNet, emphasizing
that he was expressing only his personal opinion, not that of the federal
public defenders' office.

The US Supreme Court announced
Monday that it will decide whether people who use medical marijuana on
a doctor's recommendation are subject to punishment under the Controlled
Substances Act. The court agreed to hear the Justice Department's
appeal of a landmark 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals December decision
that the act does not apply to patients in states that have medical marijuana
laws and who are not involved in interstate commerce in the drug.

The stakes are enormous.
If the high court upholds the 9th Circuit decision, medical marijuana patients
across the land will win protection for their non-commercial, intrastate
medical marijuana use. If the court reverses the 9th Circuit, it
could mean a return to the bad old days of the Drug Enforcement Administration
swooping down and arresting patients and caregivers even in states that
have legalized medical marijuana.

That 9th Circuit ruling came
in Raich v. Ashcroft, where two seriously ill California women, Angel Raich
and Diane Monson, had sued the federal government over its harassment of
medical marijuana users and providers in the state. Their lawsuit
asked for a court order enjoining the Justice Department from prosecuting
them for smoking, growing, or obtaining marijuana for reasons related to
their medical conditions.

The case had its genesis
in a raid at the Butte County home of Diane Monson, who, with a doctor's
recommendation, used marijuana to alleviate severe back spasms. In
that raid, a joint operation between Butte County sheriff's deputies and
DEA agents, the deputies concluded that Monson legally possessed the pot
under California law. But after a three-hour stand-off with the deputies,
the DEA agents seized and destroyed her plants. She and her fellow
plaintiff, Angel Raich, sought relief in federal court.

In the first federal appeals
court ruling to find any part of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act unconstitutional,
the 9th Circuit granted Raich and Monson's request. A divided three-judge
panel found that using marijuana on the advice of a doctor is "different
in kind from drug trafficking" and that "this limited use is clearly distinct
from the broader illicit drug market." According to the opinion authored
by Judge Harry Pregerson, "cultivation, possession, and use of marijuana
for medicinal purposes and not for exchange or distribution is not properly
characterized as commercial or economic activity" and is thus outside federal
jurisdiction.

Government lawyers, unsurprisingly,
have a different view. It his appeal to the Supreme Court, US Solicitor
General Theodore Olson argued that state laws that carve exceptions for
medical marijuana are overridden by federal law. The Controlled Substances
Act regulates "all manufacturing, possession and distribution of any" drug
on its schedules, Olson wrote. "That goal cannot be achieved if the
intrastate manufacturing, possession and distribution of a drug may occur
without any federal regulation."

Attorney Robert Raich is
both married to plaintiff Angel Raich and part of the legal team that argued
her case. He saw the Supreme Court decision to accept the case as
a chance to expand patients' rights across the country. "This gives
us the opportunity to provide patients with the legal safety they need
on a nationwide basis to possess cannabis legally under federal law," he
told DRCNet.

The case is being watched
closely by marijuana reform organizations. "While a ruling overturning
Raich would not invalidate the protections that patients currently enjoy
under state law, it would allow John Ashcroft's Justice Department to resume
the federal government's war on patients," warned Rob Kampia, executive
director of the Marijuana Policy Project (http://www.mpp.org),
which helped fund the litigation. "A ruling in favor of the federal
government would mean that the phrase 'interstate commerce,' as used in
the Constitution, has become essentially meaningless," he said. "In
its appeal, the Justice Department is claiming that two patients and their
caregivers who are growing and using medical marijuana within California
-- using California seeds, California soil, California water and California
equipment -- are somehow engaged in 'interstate commerce.' The Bush
administration's assault on the meaning of the 'interstate commerce' clause
should be of concern to all conservatives."

But for this particular conservative
administration, the need to be able to pursue the war on drugs even against
sick patients trumps federalism and states' rights. An unfavorable
ruling at the Supreme Court would "seriously undermine Congress's comprehensive
scheme for the regulation of dangerous drugs," the administration argued
in its appeal. "Marijuana is a commodity that is readily purchased
and sold in a well-defined market of drug trafficking," the brief continued.
And the administration seeks a ruling that will keep it that way.

5. International Anti-Drugs
Day Marked by Executions in China, "Revolutionary Justice" in India, Silly
Stuff Elsewhere

Seventeen years ago, the
United Nations General Assembly voted to observe June 26 as the International
Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (http://www.un.org/NewLinks/drugs/).
The date marks the 1987 signing of the declaration adopted at the International
Conference against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, and its avowed purposed
is "to strengthen action and cooperation to achieve the goal of an international
society free of drug abuse."

This year, the annual event's
theme was "Drugs: Treatment Works." "The campaign aims at emphasizing
the importance and effectiveness of drug treatment -- to drug dependent
individuals, as well as to the general public," the UN Office on Drugs
and Crime noted as it announced the campaign. "UNODC also hopes to
diminish the stigma attached to drug users by illustrating the possibilities
for a positive future, using the stories of individuals who have successfully
undergone treatment and are engaged in productive lives."

China was way off-message.
Chinese state media reported over the weekend that Chinese authorities
had marked the International Day by trying, sentencing, and executing dozens
of people convicted of drug trafficking. Most of the executions took
place in southwestern Chongqing, where the Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate
People's Court convicted 16 people in a one-day, mass public trial, then
immediately killed them.

Another mass punishment took
place in Shanghai, where 78 people convicted of drug crimes were sentenced.
Among them was Lin Shengfu, a native of southern Hainan province, who was
executed after being found guilty of smuggling about four pounds of heroin
from Myanmar, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

International Anti-Drugs Day activity in Islamabad, Pakistan, 2001

But Saturday's mass killings
were just the grand finale of a hectic lead-up to the International Day
Against Drug Abuse. In Yunnan province the day before, Tan Minglin
and three others convicted of drug trafficking were executed after having
all their belongings confiscated, Xinhua reported. That same week,
courts in Fanyu, Huadu, Conghua, and Guangzhou sentenced and executed one
drug offender each. Also last week, Chen Xue'an and three others
convicted of illegally purchasing drugs were executed in Wenzhou City in
eastern Zhejiang province. Another 17 suspects were declared guilty
in Hangzhou City, "two of which were HIV/AIDS carriers sentenced to death
the same day," Xinhua reported.

China officially admits to
having about one million "registered drug addicts," but that figure could
be far higher. According to the Ministry of Public Security, Chinese
authorities have prosecuted more than half a million drug cases in the
last five years alone. They also reported seizing more than 51 tons
of heroin and 52 tons of methamphetamine.

The Chinese weren't the only
ones using the International Day Against Drug Abuse to teach murderous
lessons. According to a bizarre report in the Sangai Express in the
Indian state of Manipur, an armed group called the Organization to Save
the Revolution in Manipur (KYKL), killed Ningthoujam Raja as a drug dealer
and "also punished a number of drug abusers with a bullet each on their
legs."

According to the South Asia
Intelligence Review, KYKL, a Manipur nationalist organization in existence
for the past decade, has for the past three years undertaken a "renovation"
of Manipur society by cleansing it of vices like "immoral behavior", drug
use and trafficking, and corruption. In a press statement Saturday,
KYKL said that those shot were punished under the campaign. The group
added that they timed their operation to coincide with the International
Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The KYKL has vowed to make
Manipur's Bishnupur district "drug-free" by December. In its statement,
the group vowed to keep a close watch on all drug activities and warned
all drug users and sellers to surrender to them soon. In a sign of
the group's nationalist paranoia, it added that the Manipuri people have
been on the receiving end of "the narco-chemical warfare unleashed by India."
The province borders Burma, a leading East Asian methamphetamine producer.

There is no indication the
UN approves of "revolutionary justice" in India, and it has not spoken
to the Chinese executions. Most International Day events, in fact,
are reportedly rather boring, ill-attended, or just plain silly.
For instance, India's Chandighar Express reported that one International
Day function there consisted of a hundred kids flying kites that carried
messages warning against drug abuse.

In Malta, a series of events
organized by drug experts drew little public enthusiasm. "Poor Attendance
at International Day Against Drug Abuse Events," was how the Malta Independent
headlined its coverage. Meanwhile, back in India, Chandigarh officials
hosted a "drug de-addiction awareness program" and offered a "free treatment
camp." Some 300 villagers watched the presentation, the Express reported.

In Indonesia, the UN and
local anti-drug bureaucrats used the occasion to hand out awards to nine
journalists for their stories on juveniles and narcotics, the Jakarta Post
reported. And in several African countries, officials used the International
Day to give speeches or place opinion pieces in local newspapers.
The International Day was also observed in Bahrain, where the Northern
Governate held a series of events, including a seminar on "Drugs: A Monster
Threatening Our Society," held in conjunction with the Interior Ministry
and the Islamic Enlightenment Society, the Gulf Daily News reported.

The UN's International Day
Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking is in most places an innocuous
exercise that may even do some good -- if prevention messages are presented
in a science-based, non-propagandistic way. Describing "drugs" as
a "monster" is not an encouraging sign. But when the International
Day becomes an excuse for mass murder and "revolutionary justice," maybe
it is time for the UN to rethink this annual exercise.

Ronald Reagan's death and
Bill Clinton's book have sparked a collective flashback to the 1980s and
'90s. Drug reformers (and others) can be excused for not leaping
aboard this unctuous bandwagon; they may be struggling to ride out a media
bombardment that activates memories many would rather keep dormant.
Sappy tributes to the Gipper exclude the Reagan whose transgressions include
the vigorous launch of the modern dark age of the drug war. And when
it was to spiff up the legacy, Bill Clinton, whose tenure brought a 100%
increase in marijuana arrests, didn't devote a lot of space in his new
book to drug policy.

Martin Torgoff's "Can't Find
My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000" is a welcome antidote
to the Reagan-Clinton media circus. The book energetically sketches
the canvas of drug use in America, "not as a formal history but a journey
through the experience and culture of illicit drugs." Torgoff has
done a lot of good research and he writes well. He spoke to an impressive
roster of luminaries and ordinary people, and they help make the book a
useful primer on the social history of heroin, marijuana, amphetamine and
cocaine use as well as (if you're old enough) an engaging stroll down memory
lane.

Torgoff and his subjects
frequently recapture the feel of different moments. "There was a
short period of time... when it felt inevitable that our kind of life was
going to grow until the institutions fell and we would simply be taking
care of each other on a block-by-block basis," recalled Lynn House, who
moved from New York to San Francisco just in time for the Summer of Love
in 1967. Torgoff also weaves in his personal story without intruding
on (or deepening) the larger narrative.

And a large narrative it
is, organized chronologically and spanning a vast and raucous scene.
Torgoff begins in New York after World War II, when Herbert Huncke and
Alan Ginsberg and the Beats were finding their voices. He encounters
and writes about (all lists are partial) the pioneers (Timothy Leary, Ken
Kesey, Ann and Sasha Shulgin), the artists (Charlie Parker, Grace Slick,
Andy Warhol, Oliver Stone), the one-of-a-kinds (Wavy Gravy, Augustus Owsley
Stanley III, Hunter Thompson), the scholars (Terrence McKenna) and the
reformers (Keith Stroup, Rick Doblin, Marsha Rosenbaum). Torgoff
also brings to life some lesser lights such as Tom Forcade, drug smuggler
and founder of High Times magazine, and Lance Loud, who became an amphetamine
and amyl nitrate fan after he had arrived on and departed America's radar
screen in 1973 as part of the first-ever reality TV show, "An American
Family."

The book has a lot of good
stories. Oliver Stone tells about the time he slipped LSD into his
father's Scotch. "He was scared," said Stone, "but he was having
a ball and suspected I had done it. He talked about it until the
day he died." But Torgoff's encounters with regular folks are often
more compelling. Sylvia Nunn, aka Rambo, is an OG  Original Gangster
 who has been gangbanging as a member of the Bloods "since the very start
of the scene... When she became Homecoming Queen [in high school], her
mother gave her flowers and her father presented her with a sawed-off pump
shotgun." Dawn Reynolds attended the 1967 Monterey International
Pop Festival as an 18-year-old "alabaster beauty" who was known as an "acid
angel" in Los Angeles and who "looked sophisticated way beyond her years
and exuded a bold open sensuality." Reynolds was in San Francisco
for the Summer of Love, after which she "wandered from scene to scene,
drug to drug, man to man, up and down the California coast." By the
early '70s, Reynolds made the discovery that so many others would come
to and that would give that decade its peculiar stamp: "The path
was within, and the subject was me."

Torgoff recounts a conversation
with his father "that would inspire this book." His father challenged
him to "go ahead and tell me -- what did any of it really mean?"
This is where Torgoff's book loses its freshness and lapses into platitudes.
"... as a society we face enormously difficult and complex problems concerning
the use of illicit drugs," he writes. "Only through the most rigorously
honest appraisal of this subject will we ever be able to make sense of
the past." True enough, but hardly new. Torgoff's book scores
high for its profiles and its social history; readers looking for compelling
interpretations of that history will be disappointed.

7. Newsbrief:
Bill Introduced in Congress Would Mandate Ten Years to Life for Some Marijuana
Sales

Rep. James Sensenbrenner
(R-WI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill June
14 that would radically increase mandatory minimum prison sentences for
anyone furnishing any controlled substance, including marijuana, to a minor
or to anyone who has been in drug treatment before. It would also
create mandatory minimum life sentences for a second offense, as well as
creating mandatory minimum sentences for furnishing drugs in a designated
"drug-free zone."

Under current federal law,
distribution to a minor carries a one-year mandatory minimum sentence;
Sensenbrenner's bill would raise that to 10 years. Similarly, drug
sales within a "drug-free zone" currently nets a mandatory minimum one-year
sentence; Sensenbrenner's bill would raise that to five years. It
also expands the definition of "drug-free zones" from schools, college
campuses, and video arcade facilities (!?) to include "public library,
or public or private daycare facility," and drug treatment facilities.

The bill would also order
the US Sentencing Commission to make appropriate adjustments in its sentencing
guidelines. Telling the Sentencing Commission and federal judges
what to do is familiar business for Rep. Sensenbrenner, who helped ensure
the passage last year of the much-criticized Feeney Amendment, which restricts
federal judges' ability to grant downward departures from the harsh federal
sentencing guidelines.

But, hey, don't say Sensenbrenner
lacks compassion. The bill also includes relief for snitches or,
in Sensenbrenner's language, a provision "assuring limitation on applicability
of statutory minimums to persons who have done everything they can to assist
the government."

There was action on two fronts
last week in the battle to bring needle exchange programs (NEPs) to New
Jersey, one of only five states that makes possession of a needle without
a prescription a crime and, along with neighboring Delaware, one of only
two that has failed to pass laws explicitly allowing syringe distribution
under some circumstances. The Garden State boasts the nation's fifth-highest
rate of HIV infection, with more than half of new infections related to
injection drug use.

Citing Scotti's legal analysis
of a 1999 revision of state law, which concluded that municipalities were
exempt from the prohibitions on NEPs, the city council in Atlantic City
passed a NEP ordinance on June 16. The Camden city council followed
suit on June 24.

Camden Waterfront

Both councils acted despite
opinions from local prosecutors and state Attorney General Peter Harvey
that NEPs remain illegal in New Jersey. While Harvey's office has
so far done nothing more than warn ominously that the votes are "under
review," Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz this week filed a lawsuit
in state Superior Court to block Atlantic City's NEP.

According to Blitz's reading,
New Jersey's paraphernalia law forbids the distribution of needles without
a prescription, pure and simple. "The law would not permit (the prosecutor)
to turn a blind eye to violations of... narcotics paraphernalia offenses
which the needle exchange program would generate," Blitz said in court
papers.

Atlantic City Solicitor Daniel
Gallagher disagreed. "It's going to come down to how the judge interprets
the statutes," Gallagher told the Press of Atlantic City. "We believe
the statutes can be interpreted to allow municipalities to do this."

Scotti told the Press DPA
is putting together a legal team to represent the city if it chooses to
fight, and there is every indication it will. Health and Human Services
Director Ron Cash, who pushed for the city to approve a NEP, was grateful
for the offer of assistance. "We can use all the legal help we can
get, particularly people who have dealt with this before," he said.

9. Newsbrief:
Iran Wants to Ban Water Pipes

Iranian authorities have
targeted hookahs, or water pipes, as part of a crackdown on immorality,
Reuters reported last week. While Iranian police said the ban was
part of an effort to ban smoking in public, other officials suggested it
was a move by religious police to prevent any slippage in the country's
strictly enforced public morality.

The water pipes, which are
used to smoke fruit-flavored tobacco (sometimes sprinkled with hashish
by adventurous young people) in a convivial social setting, are ubiquitous,
not only in Iran, but across the Middle East. Hookah cafes (not serving
hash) have even opened in US cities ranging from Pittsburgh to San Diego
in recent years.

"According to Health Ministry
directives, the ban on water pipes will be implemented," said Health Ministry
official Hassan Azaripour. Restaurant owners and patrons faced fines
if caught puffing, he added.

International Anti-Drugs Day activity in Tehran, Iran, 2001

But apparently some hookahs
are more equal than others. According to Tehran prosecutor Saeed
Mortazavi, his agents would not be targeting traditional eateries where
hookahs are de rigeuer. Instead, he said, they are targeting mingling
of the sexes in cafes and clubs and women who flout strict Islamic dress
codes. "Of course we will be rigorous in dealing with the promoters
of vice and fornication," he said.

According to Reuters, restaurateurs
in a tourist zone north of Tehran were packing their pipes into boxes last
week. But in an old-style restaurant in central Tehran, diners continued
to suck on the hookahs despite the supposed ban. When asked by Reuters
why authorities had banned the pipes, a waiter there tapped his finger
against his temple. "They are mad," he said.

The waiter's boss, restaurant
manager Iraj, agreed that the ban was misplaced. "It is not vice,"
he said. "People are scared of these men who quote the Koran to make
law, but vice is not in external things like water pipes. Vice is
in your own heart."

"The point is
that the potency of available marijuana has not merely 'doubled,' but increased
as much as 30 times."- US Office of National
Drug Control Policy director (drug czar) John Walters, San Francisco Chronicle,
September 2002

John Walters made that unsupported
claim in the heat of the 2002 election campaign, and even his own organization
has since backed away from it. According to the ONDCP web site (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov),
"the average potency of samples of all cannabis types increased from 3%
in 1991 to 5.2% in 2001... The concentration of THC in sinsemilla was about
6% in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and averaged more than 9% in 2001."
But the legacy of Walters' lies lingers:

"Today's pot is often up to
eight times stronger than the marijuana of the seventies, according to
the Drug Enforcement Administration."
- CoolNurse.com (http://www.coolnurse.com/marijuana/)

"But there's stuff out there
now that's 10, 20, even 50 times as potent we could get for research in
the '70s."
- Dr. Reese Jones, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco,
Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2004

Those folks need to read a report
released last week by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug
Addiction (EMCDDA). Cognizant of the widely echoed claims that marijuana
potency has gone through the roof in the past two or three decades, the
Europeans decided to take their own look.

"The available data do not
show any long-term marked upward trend in the potency of herbal cannabis
or cannabis resin [hashish] imported into Europe," EMCDDA concluded.
"Today's report shows that effective potency of cannabis in nearly all
EU countries has remained quite stable for many years, at around 68% THC."

The report was based on testing
of marijuana, hashish, and hash oil samples seized in 14 West and East
European countries in 2001 and 2002.

The Netherlands is on the
high end of the spectrum when it comes to marijuana potency, the report
noted. There, cannabis potency "had reached 16%, largely due to the
increasing availability of intensively produced home-grown cannabis."
EMCDDA attributed high Dutch potency levels to the fact that Hollanders
consumed a higher percentage of high-octane home-grown sinsemilla than
people in other European countries, who were more likely to use less potent
varieties from North Africa.

"The message we draw from
this study is that we should neither be over-alarmist nor too complacent
about the potency of cannabis available today," said EMCDDA executive director
Georges Estievenart. "Cannabis produced within Europe using new methods
is consistently of higher potency, although this product remains relatively
rare in most countries. But this could change, and we must therefore
implement measures to monitor the situation carefully and extend our understanding
of what impact high-potency cannabis is likely to have on the health of
cannabis users."

Oh, those Europeans!
Too cautious to wave away all concerns; too reasonable to fall prey to
anti-drug hysterics like John Walters. It seems like a nice way to
be.

Last October, DRCNet reported
on a pair of rulings by the North Carolina Court of Appeals that cocaine
possession was a misdemeanor under state law, not a felony (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/313/misdemeanor.shtml).
One section of state law classified cocaine possession as a misdemeanor,
punishable by up to five years in prison, while another section of state
law read that a felony is any crime punishable by time in state prison.

The rulings came in the cases
of Norman Wayne Jones and Corey Sneed-El, both of whom had been convicted
of felony cocaine possession and both of whom were subjected to enhanced
sentences as habitual offenders under the state's sentencing guidelines.

The two courts held that
language of the law was plain: simple possession was a misdemeanor.
"Since the General Assembly made this law, it is not within the province
of this Court to employ legal gymnastics to read the clear language differently
than what it states," said the unanimous opinion in the second case, written
by Judge James Wynn.

On June 23, the state Supreme
Court overturned the Court of Appeals decisions, holding that the state's
General Assembly really meant for cocaine possession to be a felony charge
and that such convictions can be considered when determining habitual felon
status.

"I'm pleased that the North
Carolina Supreme Court recognizes that possession of cocaine should remain
a felony," said state Attorney General Roy Cooper in a prepared statement.
"This ruling is critical to our fight against drugs and crime because it
allows for longer sentences and gives prosecutors the opportunity to use
cocaine possession charges to keep habitual felons off the street."

Sneed-El's attorney, Daniel
Shatz, professed disappointment, saying the state law was clear that cocaine
possession was a misdemeanor. The state's sentencing structure is
a wreck, he told the Charlotte News & Observer. "It really needs
some overhauling," Shatz said. "What you get is essentially a lot
of people who are drug addicts or have substance abuse problems who are
being warehoused in the prison system instead of getting treatment."

North Carolina drug warriors
may have dodged a bullet with this ruling, but as a sentencing guidelines
state, in the wake of last week's US Supreme Court Blakely ruling (see
article in this issue), North Carolina is now facing a howitzer shell coming
straight at it.

Ethan Nadelmann's "An End
to Marijuana Prohibition" gets the cover of National Review's July 12th
issue -- check it out on the newstands.

13. This Week
in History

July 4, 2001: Britain's
former ambassador to Keith Morris, comes out for legalization in The Guardian.
Morris writes:

It must be time
to start discussing how drugs could be controlled more effectively within
a legal framework. Decriminalization, which is often mentioned, would
be an unsatisfactory halfway house, because it would leave the trade in
criminal hands, giving no help at all to the producer countries, and would
not guarantee consumers a safe product or free them from the pressure of
pushers. It has been difficult for me to advocate legalization because
it means saying to those with whom I worked, and to the relatives of those
who died, that this was an unnecessary war. But the imperative must
be to try to stop the damage. Drug prohibition does not work.

July 3, 1:00-10:00pm, Biloxi, MS, "A Tribute to the Constitution," featuring Bill Shaw of LEAP, blues and alternative music, other activities. At Point Cadet Plaza, for further information contact Jim at (228) 392-3204 or smit44@bellsouth.net.

July 9, Bangkok, Thailand, "Human Rights at the Margins: HIV/AIDS, Prisoners, Drug Users and the Law," satellite conference preceding the 15th International AIDS Conference. Sponsored by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit (India), the International Harm Reduction Development Program, and the Thai Drug Users Network, co-hosted by UNAIDS with additional partner ICASO. Registration fee $75, can be waived for persons with HIV or from developing countries, limited to 125 participants. For further information, visit http://www.aidslaw.ca/bangkok2004/e-bangkok2004.htm or contact Natalie Morin at (514) 397-6828 or nmorin@aidslaw.ca.

July 13, 7:30pm, Boulder, CO, "The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War," discussion with contributing authors. At the Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl Street, contact (303) 447-2074 or boulderbk@aol.com for directions or visit http://www.coloradofreedom.org for further information.

July 18, noon-6:00pm, New York, NY, 5th Annual Isidro Aviles Memorial Picnic, teach-in with Teresa Aviles of the November Coalition, contact isidroŠnovember.org for further information.

September 20, Shrewsbury, MA, "Help or Hurt: Responding to the Criminalization of Mental Illness and Addiction," forum sponsored by the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition and the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts. At Hoagland Pincus Center, registration opens June 15, visit http://www.cjpc.org for further information.

November 11-14, New Orleans, LA, "Working Under Fire: Drug User Health and Justice 2004," 5th National Harm Reduction Conference. Sponsored by the Harm Reduction Coalition, at the New Orleans Astor Crowne Plaza, contact Paula Santiago at (212) 213-6376 x15 or visit http://www.harmreduction.org/conference/5thnatlconf.pdf for further information.

November 18-21, College Park, MD, Students for Sensible Drug Policy national conference. Details to be announced, visit http://www.ssdp.org to check for updates.

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